When Sadie Barnette Learned The FBI Kept Records On Her Dad's Activism, She Saw Potential For Art

Los Angeles-based multimedia artist Sadie Barnette has long known about her father Rodney Barnette’s time spent as a member of The Black Panthers. And though she and Rodney both suspected that Rodney had been the victim of surveillance during the 1970s (he at one point lost his job at the post office for “cohabitation with a woman he was not married to”), neither father nor daughter knew the extent of the authorities’ malicious intentions until Rodney received his FBI files via a Freedom of Information Act request last year (the Black Panthers’ 50th Anniversary). “The scrutiny on my father was so intense that this file alone is jaw dropping,” says Sadie.

Rodney had been followed and watched through his entire time with the Panthers. Sadie immediately knew that these files were rife for a conceptual art project, and the exhibition resulting from this concept is Do Not Destroy which will be on display at Baxter St. Camera Club of New York until February 18. Highlighting the intensity of the violations of Rodney’s personal freedoms, Sadie and Rodney selected key documents from the files, photocopied them and simply assembled them along the gallery’s walls. Sadie splattered the documents with neon spray paint emphasizing the assault on a human being’s personal space and sense of security. The documents reveal surveillance of Rodney’s associations with famous activists like Angela Davis, notes by Watergate disgraced fed James W. McCord Jr., and are all stamped by the boogie man’s seal of approval: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Topped off by two polaroid photographs of Rodney in the ‘70s, young and handsome brandishing the Black Panther outfit of choice (the black leather jackets and turtlenecks look is unbeatable you have to admit), the exhibition works as a sociological study into the history of activism as well as it does a touching portrait of a father by a daughter, the show tackles themes of identity, surveillance, oppression, mistrust, abuse of power, and minority experience in America. It also validates Rodney’s long held beliefs about his treatment at the hand of authorities.“Probably most Americans didn’t believe, and still don’t believe, their government would go that far to disrupt a legitimate movement for freedom,” says Rodney. “It’s kind of liberating for me to finally see the thorough and intense monitoring and spying and attempts to disrupt the Black liberation movement.”

Rodney Barnette

In this project, Sadie, who works in photography, drawing, installation, and bookmaking, located a means of exploring her own identity and family history that builds on her larger practice. Barnette’s work explores everyday mundanity but identifies those moments that make the ordinary extraordinary, or even extra-terrestrial. The documents are literally a day to day recollection of Rodney’s activities, but they also illustrate a man imbued with the strength to continue to fight for what he believes. Those moments captivate Sadie, and her art is in reframing them and emphasizing her viewing of them. It is an art of relation more than of creation. “As an artist, people tell you the way you look at things matters. So you do it,” says Sadie. “A lot of people don’t get to trust that voice as much, because they aren’t looking to collect those moments.”

Sadie and I spoke at length about her father, the history of the Black Panthers, her artistic practice, and much more.

Adam Lehrer: Sadie, when did you learn that the Feds kept such an extensive file on your father, and did you immediately know that it would be ripe to explore in your art practice?

Sadie Barnette: I remember growing up I’d pick the phone, this was in landline days. If you heard a little click when you were talking to someone…

AL: Then your phone was bugged.

SB: Right. But I had no idea how extensive the file was until my father requested it through FOIA about four years ago. My dad wanted to know what kind of interactions he had had with informants and agents. It took three years to get the file from the FBI. It was arduous and I’m sure that was on purpose. Most people would give up. I knew that it would be an amazing source material for art. I didn’t know what form it would take. I think it’ll be something I’m working on for a long time in different iterations. T, but it also inspires fear in that we now know how much worse surveillance has gotten. Now our files are terabytes linking us to everyone we’ve ever spoken to and everyone they’ve ever spoken to.

AL: I read that you think of your work as a way of seeing the world more than making things. Does that mean that there is no line between your personal life and art practice?

SB: Yeah. Even in this show, I’m trying to curate these pages and demonstrate how I’m looking at them. Even when I’m adding spray paint to these pages I’m still working with it as a found document. It’s not a process of reinventing, it’s about showing and reframing. There are moments I often see that I wish I could take a picture of but can’t, and I have this running archive of these things in my mind. I think the cool thing about contemporary art is that you can work in so many mediums, subjects and interest to build a larger narrative. Whether it’s racehorse names or FBI files, they all fit into this way that I’m trying to organize my thoughts and experiences.

AL: I often think the multi-media artist now was what artist of the “Pictures Generations” (Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, Richard Prince, etc..) were to the ‘80s or what abstract expressionists (Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning) were to the post-WWII era, in that multi-media artists are best reflective of contemporary culture. We’re a generation that grew up with limitless access to accrue wildly diverse tastes.

SB: I’m informed by the Pictures Generations but also Hip-hop and the idea of sampling or borrowing, layering and deriving meaning from putting things together. You can’t ignore that way of making things. To me, it seems the closest way to engage with reality. You have all these images pointing to one another and exposing the failures of each image. That gets you closer to success.

AL: You portray day to day imagery but are looking for the majestic or the extraterrestrial in a day to day experience, how did that process manifest itself in your work?

SB: The first thing that made me think about outer space and that mythology was Outkast. And Sun Ra. In the art world we call it Afro-futurism. But before I knew that term, Outkast’s idea about ATLiens spoke to me: This urban communion with aliens because things aren’t going well on Earth. My work isn’t super-narrative. It’s a looser connection to abstraction. It’s a psychological coping mechanism almost. With the glitter and those holographic materials, to me they represent transcendence and escape. You can get these from looking at outer space, eating a bunch of ecstasy or looking at something shiny. These are all mechanisms of escape.

AL: You talk about these extraordinary moments that break up the mundanity of day to day existence. How do you locate these moments, and what does it feel like to capture them?

SB: They jump out and grab me. Sometimes they re just so absurd, or beautiful, or sad. These moments that you encounter but you can’t process them to be as weighted as they are. You’d never get anywhere if you processed everything. But if you pay attention they are there.

AL: know you studied photography at CalArts. And it was while doing so you started moving onto other mediums. Did you feel constrained solely working in photos and when did you incorporate other elements to your practice?

SB: I didn’t feel limited by photography but by the conversation around photography in the department. At CALArts there was photography and there was everything else. It was more conceptual and institutional. I found that liberating. If you’re working in other mediums than the choice of mediums becomes a tool. If you decide to draw an image that could be made as easy silkscreened than the choice to draw becomes a part of the work.

AL: And CalArts has a really rich history in multimedia art: John Baldessari, Mike Kelley, Tony Oursler. It was founded by Walt Disney for chrissakes.

SB: CALArts was amazing. It was good to be there as an undergrad because I wasn’t concerned about the professional aspects of the art world. I was just being introduced to these crazy ideas, running around and taking drugs. The school cultivates that. It introduces you to ideas but also allows you to figure out life. It’s a special place.

AL: What I find interesting about this exhibition is you are able to explore Black Panther history alongside your own family tree. What was it like to find that you family has this substantial history in American activism.

SB: I had mixed emotions about it. It was a wonderfully well-preserved history of our family. But it was coming from a place of violent surveillance and harassment. But I got to look at the history of the Black Panthers and reclaim my father’s story. And also I got to expose the FBI. What becomes clear is that the FBI was actively trying to dismantle the Black Panthers. They got my dad fired from the post office. A lot of people were assassinated and these informants actually confessed to these assassinations. It all made me feel glad that my dad is still here.

AL: It’s astounding how misrepresented the Black Panther Party still is. Everything from CNN to Forest Gump presents the Black Panther Party as this scary, extremist mob.

SB: J. Edgar Hoover said that the most dangerous aspect of the Black Panthers was the Free Breakfast program. He knew it was something that could organize the community.

AL: By winning peoples trust they’d become more powerful and influential?

SB: Yeah. Exactly. They knew that was what the Panthers did best and that that image was not the image they wanted presented to the public. So they emphasized the black leather jackets and the guns.

AL: There are some very intriguing sociological underpinnings to this project. Your father joined the Black Panthers straight out of Vietnam to defend black men and women from being murdered. And it seems like during times of aggressive foreign policy, the US internally takes on more aspects of a police state. Now, we’ve been at war for a long time. We have police shootings and the rise of Black Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter being discredited. Were these historical connections made clear to you while assembling the work?

SB: Absolutely. The 10 Point Program of the Black Panthers sounds like it could be written today by Black Lives Matter. It discusses structural change and systems of oppression. I’ve never not thought about those things, but I think we’re in a moment when those things are coming into public discourse more commonly. The Panthers dabbed in electoral politics and ran some candidates, but they weren’t interested in a black president; they were interested in a new system where the president has a new job. It’s a problem when people are applauding The Black Panthers but not critiquing the Obama presidency, which I have a lot of problems with.

AL: Lots of artists reject their family values and traditions, but you embrace yours whole-heartedly. Your family is in-line with your personal values. Do you think that informed your artistic practice in any way?

SB: My whole family has been supportive. They roll deep to my art openings! Those moments are like a display of black love. It also becomes a performative element accidentally. There are so many dynamic and beautiful things about my family. A lot of it has to do with the generosity that it takes to be an activist. And the bravery and the humor required to fight for something bigger than yourself. My parents taught me to look at the world critically and think about systemic racism and the prison industrial complex.

I think about change in the world that I want to see but my art is not a protest sign. But that family narrative allows the politics in the work to not come off as dogmatic or heavy handed. It’s not politics 101.

AL: I admire that. For a variety of reasons, we are living in this world where everyone needs all of their art and everything else to be relatable. So if the message isn’t easily palatable, then people don’t respond to it. Every Hollywood film in 2016, even the ones I loved, I could boil down to a tagline. Like Arrival: a lot of bad shit will happen in your life, but it’s still worth living. People aren’t looking to be challenged by art. They want a message they can buy into. It’s almost a by-product of corporatization of culture and everything being branded.

SB: People want things that can be condensed into headlines. I hope there’s some aspect in my work that exists beyond language. An element of poetry.

Have you and your father always been close, and what was it like to do this project together?

AL: My father and I have always been close, mostly since my teens. I could always ask my dad about his time in the Panthers but he didn’t talk about it much and even less about Vietnam. He lost a lot of friends. Having these files has been a container for my dad and I to delve into this part in his life and pull out these amazing stories. He was my collaborator in this.